Police shot a bear that mauled a woman jogger in Lappeenranta on Friday. Following the encounter in the Kasukkala-Sunila area, south-east of Lappeenranta, the bear headed toward the centre of town. The incident was reported shortly before 6 pm

Bear shot in Finland along with two cubs

Encounters with bears are common in the South Karelia region...

Publisert: 04.07.09 13:18

Police shot a bear that mauled a woman jogger in Lappeenranta on Friday.

Following the encounter in the Kasukkala-Sunila area, south-east of Lappeenranta, the bear headed toward the centre of town. The incident was reported shortly before 6 pm.Police were assisted by frontier guard officers and 50 hunters in their search for the bear, YLW says.

Encounters with bears are common in the South Karelia region. In Lappeenranta alone, 137 bear sightings have been reported to authorities this year.

In June 1998, a jogger was killed after startling a mother bear in Ruokolahti, some 50 km from Lappeenranta -- the first such fatality in the country in more than a century.

"several hundred Finns are killed annually in traffic accidents, but no strong voice emerged against the growing number of private cars. Moreover, even though traffic accidents with the semi-wild elks result in approximately ten human lives lost in Finland every year, no agreement on reducing the elk population has been reached"

Finland has a bear fixation, putting bears on jigsaw maps of the country, Norwegians consult the trolls at the bottom of the gardens before going away on an important jouney, and Iceland has troll-rocks. Its history is defined by ice. (from:Don't go down to the woods today)

More details about the legal situation of hunting and Finland's bear population, you can find here in an extract of the book:Bears , a compilation about status survey nd conservation action plan (IUCN/1999)

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